16 Responses to “Honky, please”

Der Trumpfenator’s campaign is gonna have do some fancy dancing with this one. Monday morning, Melania told Matt Lauer on Today that she wrote the speech herself with as little help as possible. And then a 2:00 AM (Tuesday) twitter came out that she had a team of writers that wrote the speech. Lies and plagiarism – great start to the general campaign. And if you’re the presumptive presidential candidate for the Republican party, why oh why would you plagiarize the current first lady of a Democratic president?

Sadly, most TP supporters will never hear or read about this. If it is pointed out, they will blame Michelle Obama and suggest *she* is the plagiarizer. Really. Also, the “media” will be blamed and called liars. I encounter this mindset socially and before I retired, at work.

First question: Do you think either one of these ladies actually wrote the speech that she gave? By the time they came up to the podium I’m sure there was at least five or six writers had something to do with that speech on both sides. I will admit that Mrs. Obama seemed to do a better job but, she is a highly educated woman that was brought up where English is the native language. I believe she met Barry at Harvard where they both were studying.

Fortunately she has not tried to create or pass any legislation, she’s just doing the first lady gig as the majority of her predecessors have done.

Most first ladies have speech writers – I think that’s a fairly well known fact. And I don’t think it would have been as big a tumult if Melania and her husband had kept it at that. But the fact that she was interviewed for the Today show yesterday saying, essentially, that she wrote the speech with as little help as possible puts the onus on her. And now there appears to be some blow back from RNC/Trump sources blaming the whole thing on a team of writers (and I tend to think it was a team of writers that wrote that speech). The whole thing makes her look bad at the worst possible time. I suspect that she was prompted by Donald to take credit for the speech in order to make her look better to the American public. Boy, did that ever backfire.

Why is that the first question? I got it at #87. Because it’s beside the point.

No one is suggesting Mrs Obama for the Supreme Court, and no one is personally disparaging Mrs Trump.

What should be the first questions are:

1) is Trump’s team handling their affairs like professionals? If they can’t put a speech together on their own, what else will they need help with?

2) How do they handle adversity? During the primary, trump squealed like a stuck pig both times he got a tough question. His team is doing it again today. First they release a statement blaming the speech writers, unaware that Mrs Trump has been telling everyone she wrote it herself with minimal help. (Sun Tzu 101: know your enemy, know yourself.) When that didn’t work, the freak out, going so far as to blaming Hillary.
How does that bode when he’s at the G8, the UN, or NATO? They’re not going to lob him softballs.

No one cares who actually wrote each set of words. Thats your first question? Hate to see #2, 3, etc.

“You can ignore most “process” stories if you’re not a politically interested person. But these are process stories that cumulatively matter. If a potential commander- in-chief is repeatedly wrong-footed by the challenges of a week in Cleveland, God save us if you try to deal with the whole government.”

When was the last time that political conventions were not all window dressing and propaganda for the true believers? The big difference with this repub convention is that the real power brokers and their paid for politicians are not there. We don’t know, at this time, whether Adelson gave the $6 million the party needed to break even on the convention costs. The Koch bros want nothing to do with Trump. So, when the dump Trump supporters lost their last appeal, a roll call vote on the rules, the rest of this convention was set as the Clinton is a crook and Trump is the greatest dog and pony show. I really liked the sheriff dressed up like fucking Patton. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Had a good laugh this morning when they interspersed Michelle and Melania’s speeches.

Reminded me of one day I got home in Honolulu and my wife and a close friend were sitting at the dining room table with reams and reams of postem notes. On one side was my wife’s five or six year old (successful) tenure and promotion application document, which ran about a hundred pages. On the other side of the table was a just-submitted promotion document submitted by another faculty member at the same college.

By chance, my wife just happened to be on that faculty member’s tenure and promotion review committee. She started reading the document and got this creepy deja vu feeling, so she dug up her copy of her own tenure application and lugged both home. Sure enough, that person had “borrowed” my wife’s document and done a pretty massive cut and paste job on her promo document. Needless to say, the shit hit the windmill on a windy day.